With the opening of two grand, new casino facilities in the Valley of the Sun in the past year-and-a-half and hugely popular televised poker tournaments that create instant millionaires annually, the expansion and popularity of poker can’t be denied.

As a 25-year veteran of the gaming industry, I’ve seen how racinos alter the course of gaming and gaming regulation within a state. Although I have yet to see a bill this year that would allow race tracks to add slot machines and table games, my greatest concern is the ripple effect that will occur in the wake of such legislation.

FLAGSTAFF - Navajos voted Dec. 15 to drastically reduce the size of the Tribal Council and give their president a line-item veto in the first ballot initiatives ever brought before tribal members on the nation's largest Indian reservation.

Agriculture was big business long before the first Spanish conquistador, Franciscan friar or American wagon train reached the Valley of the Sun.
Centuries of canal-building, first by the Huhugam, followed by their descendents the Akimel O'odham people (also known as Pimas) and their Pee-Posh, or Maricopa, neighbors, brought life-giving water from the Gila, Salt and other local rivers to fertile fields of corn, beans, squash, tobacco, lima beans and cotton.